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A loud and crispy Korean street food has become the newest form of Toronto supermarket theatre.

It’s called a popper, but sometimes goes by the names rice pop, rice cake, Korean-style wheat cake or even “popsta” rice crackers.

Poppers were first seen here in 2003 at Galleria, a Korean supermarket. They moved into the Asian chain T&T three years ago, and are now proliferating at Loblaws, Sobeys and Longo’s.

Everybody, it seems, is sampling the bowl-shaped treat that’s the size of a dessert plate.

Poppers are a modest 19 calories on their own, but people rarely eat them that way. Instead they slather them with jam, jelly, salsa, chocolate hazelnut spread, hummus, fruit, chocolate, whipped cream, yogurt, berries and more. Some people use them instead of bread to make sandwiches. Others put a fried egg in the concave disc and call it breakfast.

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But the real appeal of poppers is probably the machines that turn out fresh ones every eight seconds with a thunderous sound.

“It’s a great conversation piece and an attention grabber,” says Joey Bernaudo, Longo’s director of bakery and deli. “It creates theatre in the store.”

Won Ha, Galleria’s mainstream marketing manager, says poppers date back to the early 1900s in South Korea and a time of economic trouble and widespread hunger. Mobile vendors cruised the streets with portable machines to pop rice and other grains using a combination of heat and pressure.

“When I was a little kid in Seoul, the rice pop man came around our neighbourhood,” recalls Jessica Kim, Galleria’s senior designer and assistant marketing manager. “He would yell, and even if he didn’t yell, I would hear this huge sound. We would take down plain rice or anything — dry corn, barley — and he would pop it and put it in a big plastic bag for us.”

Since the 1980s, says Ha, Koreans have re-embraced “rice pops” as a traditional food and trendy snack.

When Galleria launched in Thornhill in 2003, it imported a Korean popper machine. Its second branch on York Mills Rd. has two machines tucked into a snack corner in the prepared-food area.

Kyeong Sook Tack, production manager for Galleria’s street food department, runs the machines five hours a day, making more than 4,000 rice pops each day. She packs them into clear plastic bags and sells 20 for $2.99. Turnover is brisk.

“It’s good entertainment on the floor,” says Ha. “And people perceive it as a healthy snack because you don’t deep-fry it.”

Galleria uses the name rice pops but concedes the snacks are made from 98 per cent wheat flour and 2 per cent rice powder with a hint of sugar, salt and soybean oil. The dry mix, which is imported, resembles small grains of rice. It’s fed into the popper machine where it quickly blasts out in a 15-centimetre disc.

It’s a similar story at Loblaws, Sobeys and Longo’s, chains that have all bought popper machines from Ken Tracey and Terry Brush of Garavogue company. They all sell bags of poppers for $2.99.

Longo’s started testing the concept in Richmond Hill in April 2010 and now has Garavogue machines in 12 branches. Each machine goes in the bakery department with a kiosk and lots of signage. The chain runs them on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays when it can capture crowds with demos and samples.

Loblaws first introduced a popper machine to its Burnhamthorpe store in August 2010 after spotting the concept at a trade show in San Francisco. It now has 20 in Loblaws and Real Canadian Superstores, including 16 in Greater Toronto.

Sobeys started experimenting with popper machines last spring and now has them in 27 stores, including one Sobeys Urban Fresh. It plans 89 by spring.

“The theatre draws people to it, but it’s the taste and the nutrition that keeps them going back,” says Brush. “There’s no sodium, no frying and way less calories” than other crunchy snacks like potato chips. Garavogue’s popper mixture is mostly wheat with tapioca starch and soybean flakes.

Garavogue’s supplier in Korea reports that popper machines are modeled on “bbun tui gi” machines that date back to the 1960s. Poppers literally “explode” out of the machine, creating the loud, signature pop.

T&T Supermarket started selling poppers about three years ago at its Cherry St. location and now has machines in seven Ontario stores. Like Galleria, its ingredient list includes sugar and salt.

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